A cognitive approach to metaphor translation in diplomatic discourse from English into Arabic

Abstract EN

The present study takes a cognitive approach to metaphor and investigates how conceptual metaphors underlying the metaphorical expressions are used in English diplomatic discourse and explores how they are translated into Arabic.

the objective of this study is to uncover the peculiarities and the major types of metaphor represented in diplomatic speeches as well as translation decisions between two unrelated languages and cultures, namely English and Arabic.

the theoretical framework relies mainly on Lakoff and Johnson's (1980 / 2003) groundbreaking conceptual Metaphor theory (CMT) and Mandelblit’s (1995) cognitive translation hypothesis (CTH).

the study is carried out employing a contrastive analysis by identifying the most frequent conceptual metaphors underlying metaphorical expressions in the source text and their equivalents in the target text, and comparing them on the basis of the two schemes proposed in cognitive translation hypothesis, so as to determine whether the translator preserves and/or transforms the conceptual mapping of metaphors of the source text while translating them to the target text.